This time of year is the silly season for candidates and their tripping all over each other to parade out their endorsements from newspapers. So I thought I would take a few minutes to share my ten cents about "newspaper endorsements" — which is this.
First and foremost — what IS the endorsement of a newspaper? In almost every case, it means that the editorial board of a newspaper has held some sort of vote and decided to put the good name of that paper behind a particular candidate for office. Who is on an editorial board? Well, to be honest, that varies from paper to paper. But it has been my experience that these are the editorial writers for the paper, and then add for good measure the editorial page director, sometimes it includes columnists, and even the local cartoonist. Decidedly NOT voting on the final decision to endorse a particular candidate are the political reporters from the ‘news’ side of a newspaper, though often the news reporters are invited to come and ‘explain’ the details of a race that they are covering, and answer questions from the editorial board.
Of course, the important thing to remember is that most of the editorial boards of newspapers around California are populating by liberal ideologues, who have a decidedly favorable view of the use of government as a remedy for all of California’s ills. Admittedly, that is a generalization. There are some examples of newspapers with editorial boards that tend to be more conservative, but that is by far the exception rather than the rule.
As a conservative, when I see that a newspaper has endorsed a candidate, I really start to wonder exactly what liberal thing that candidate has done in order to garner the endorsement. For example, when I see that Arnold Schwarzenegger has been endorsed by so many newspapers, I attribute that to these liberal editorial board members being enamored and excited by the Governor’s new ‘bi-partisan’ push excites them. This, of course, is combined with the fact that Angelides’ anemic campaign has pretty much convinced these ed board members that Angelides couldn’t possibly win.
**There is more – click the link**
October 18th, 2006 at 12:00 am
I would add that the voters pay minimal attention to editorials.
We (the Rose Institute) did a survey of voters just before the special election last year. Since virtually every daily paper in the state endorsed Prop 77, we simply asked respondents if their local daily paper endorsed Prop 77.
The survey respondents were all high propensity voters. Only 9% of respondents knew their local paper had endorsed the Proposition.
Even more – 14% – incorrectly said their local paper opposed Prop 77.
And 77% had no idea what side was endorsed by their local paper.
This shows that the only significant impact of endorsements is when those endorsements are reproduced extensively by the campaign in TV and mail ads.
http://rose.claremontmckenna.edu/redistricting/redistricting.asp